


Sins of the Flesh

by Darwin_xf



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-22 20:51:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15590481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darwin_xf/pseuds/Darwin_xf
Summary: Mulder is keeping secrets. And Scully, she’s not happy. Late season 5 angst.





	1. Chapter 1

Scully knocked, lightly at first. She pressed her ear to his door and heard nothing on the other side. She rapped more purposefully, rattling the brass number four which was bolted only tenuously to the door. It was noon. He would be awake.

She hauled out her key and fitted it into the lock, pushed into his apartment. 

It smelled like it usually did -- not unpleasant -- a mash up of shoe polish, aftershave, scalded soup and man sweat. But today there was also a tinge of something like overripe fruit. Outside it was a bright and fresh spring day, but the air in here was stale. Dust kicked up by her footfalls sparked and glowed in the shafts of light working through the pulled blinds. 

Mulder lay on the sofa, corpselike under his Navajo blanket, a bag of frozen peas applied to his forehead. Eyes closed.

“I know you’re awake,” she said. 

“Go away,” he said, not moving an inch or opening his eyes. 

“Nope,” she said. 

She slipped off her overcoat, hung it on the hook by the door. She went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of water. Standing there, she self-consciously smoothed down the front of her outfit, a knee length lavender wrap dress with cap sleeves and a vee neck. The type of thing she often wore to church in warmer months, but not the type of get up he often saw her in. She gathered her confidence and walked back into the room where he lay. 

She set one glass down on the coffee table next to him and settled into the leather chair opposite the couch. She crossed her legs and took a big gulp of water, holding it in her mouth a moment before swallowing. She wanted to speak purposefully, keeping her intentions in mind. 

“I don’t want to hear it Scully. Whatever you’re going to say to me, I’m already saying it to myself. And a lot less nicely.”

“We’re going to have this conversation, Mulder. You can’t call me at three in the morning to bail you out -- literally this time -- and then expect it to just go away. One conversation. That much you owe me.”

Scully had gone to church. Ten o’clock mass after only a few hours interrupted sleep, needing to round up as much strength and serenity as possible before heading to Mulder’s.

She sat restlessly at the end of the pew and yawned repeatedly during the sermon, smothering them against her shoulder. Which earned her some concerned side eye from her mother, who sat next to her rending a tissue to shreds between her fingers. 

The topic happened to be spiritual warfare. Father Mercado spoke of Jesus fasting forty days in the desert and encountering the devil, who offered him bread. The priest waved his arms on the lectern and warned of weakness, the temptations coded into our corporeal bodies to which even Christ hadn’t been immune, heralded the inoculating power of prayer. 

She doubted Mulder would believe that hype. She had no earthly idea what she was going to say to him. 

Scully generally preferred the homilies delivered by Father McCue. He must have presided over the early mass. She tuned in and out, fighting off visions of strawberry shortcake; it was possible she was herself a little bit hungry. It had been years since she’d tasted any, thought it was her favorite dessert. She was as vulnerable to sin as anyone -- she struggled with honesty, and her pride alone had caused her endless recrimination -- but she tended to hold a firm line against the sins of the flesh.

Margaret asked her afterward, once Scully had invented an excuse to get out of their lunch date, if she was getting enough rest. 

The six months previous had included a remission of Scully’s cancer, the appearance of her doomed daughter, and her nearly being incinerated on a bridge. Her mother -- who hadn’t often meddled in her responsible daughters choices -- had earned her apprehension. 

“I am, Mom. Honestly. I was up late with work, but I’m taking care of myself.” 

Two lies in one sentence. 

“I was drunk,” he said. He still hadn’t opened his eyes. 

“A lot of people got drunk last night, Mulder. It was Saturday, the first really balmy night of the year. Very few of them were arrested for solicitation.” 

“I’m just lucky I guess,” he said, opening one eye and peering at her. “Also, entrapment. I appreciate you getting the charges dropped Scully, but they never would have held up.”

“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Mulder.”

“And I see I’ve already goaded you into some post-Mass sarcasm. Things can only go downhill from here. Trust me, it’s not worth it. I’ll say it again. Go home, Scully.” 

There was a flatness to his voice that she didn’t recognize. He wasn’t just embarrassed, he was angry. Cold. He tossed the soggy bag of peas onto the end table and, in a fit of maturity, pulled the blanket up over his head.

“Maybe it was entrapment,” Scully said. “Maybe it was a misunderstanding. But I’ve found your recent behavior to be alarming, Mulder. Last night is only the starkest example.”

She waited for him to ask her what she meant, but under the blanket he didn’t stir. 

For several months, Mulder had been lying to her. Little things at first, dodging her questions about who had just called or where he’d been for an hour or two. Increasingly, he’d been unwilling to account for his whereabouts for stretches of time. On two occasions, days. 

It was new behavior and it frightened her. She had wracked her brain and had no idea what it could be about. An obvious explanation was that he was seeing someone. Someone he didn’t want to tell her about. While examining this angle made her uncomfortable for reasons that made her even more uncomfortable, she forced herself to do it. 

She could imagine that he might want to obscure an intimate relationship from her. The problem with this scenario was, having sex tended to make people happy. And he was anything but. His mood had been grim, the set of his shoulders tight, frown lines scoring his face. It had been weeks since she’d seen him really smile. 

“Solicitation is a misdemeanor, Mulder, but they take it pretty seriously in Virginia. It would have cost you at least two grand. If you caught the wrong judge -- one who took offense at the violation of public trust given your position -- you might have gone to jail. It’s doubtful you would have kept your badge.”

On the sofa he was unmoved. 

“I read the complaint. And it’s funny. While I’m hardly surprised you were attending the triple feature billed as “A Decade of Dirty Delinquents” on a Saturday night, I was surprised you offered to pay a woman for a sexual favor. I was also surprised to read that after you handed over the cash and left the theatre to collect in your car, you were described as obviously impaired, stumbling and slurring your words. You don’t typically drink like that, Mulder. Were you planning to drive home? What gives?” 

When he didn’t reply, he decided to ratchet up her rhetoric. “The next time you want to pay fifty bucks for a blow job Mulder, you should cross over into the District. There you actually have to receive the request to get arrested. They’re liberal that way.”

No response.

“I’m here as your friend, but you’re going to have to call the cops to get me out of here before you explain yourself.”

“Maybe I will,” he said, his voice muffled by the fabric pressed against his face.

“You could try Detective Murdoch, down at APD Vice. Do you know her? I found her to be very understanding.”

Under the blanket, Mulder groaned.

Scully picked up the TV remote from the coffee table and flipped it on. She tuned into a Sunday morning news show and turned it up. Five talking heads bantered about the probable origin of the chalky stain on the bodice of Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress. 

When, after a few minute of this, the lump under the blanket hadn’t stirred, she cranked it up some more. 

“Alright, fine, Scully.” Mulder said, sitting up abruptly. “Mercy. Uncle. You win. Turn that off before my headache kills me, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

She did.

Detective Murdoch, the woman who -- working undercover -- had busted Mulder, had been somewhat understanding. Her partner, a Detective Riis, had been less so. Still, when Scully asked them to, when she flashed her badge and explained that he’d been under some unusual pressure lately with difficult cases, they agreed to drop the charges. They balled up the paperwork and tossed it in the trash. 

As Scully turned to leave after thanking them profusely, Murdoch had called her back. She was eye to eye with Scully, a no nonsense type. A good cop, Scully sensed. 

“In Virginia, people who plead to solicitation are required to get mental health counseling,” she had said. “I got the feeling from your partner that he could use some. I suggest you try to get him some help. Before something bad happens.”

She’d left the station, heading back over the Key Bridge and back to bed without even seeing Mulder. 

He was slumped on the sofa now, his ankles crossed on the coffee table. He cradled his head in his hands, and his hair spiked out between his fingers. He hadn’t yet really looked at her, while he himself looked like hell, pale with a greenish cast to his skin. 

She resisted the temptation to fetch him some aspirin, or try to get some food into him, or to otherwise care for him. She had implored herself on the way over not to let him off the hook. Not this time.

She was determined to use the leverage his stupidity had granted her to find out what in the hell was up with him.


	2. Chapter 2

“What are you doing here Scully?” he asked, scrubbing his gritty face with his hands. “Rubbernecking as you pass by the flaming wreck of my life? Doing a good deed? How can I help you? What is it you want to know?”

Mulder had picked up the water she’d set down next to him and taken a long draw. He’d kicked the blanket aside, still dressed from the night before, jeans and a black t-shirt. He could smell his sharp funky sweat. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. His boots by the door were speckled with blood.

He wasn’t trying to be cruel.

She was here on a Sunday with her stubborn nose and freckles visible through a patina of make up and whatever the hell she was wearing to help him. Every time she recrossed her legs he caught a glimpse of the perfect soft flesh of her unhosed thighs. She was here to help him. He knew this.

He didn’t want to look at her. More than he needed to find his sister, more badly, even, than he needed to sleep, he needed her to leave.

“What I want to know, Mulder, is what were you thinking?”

He held the glass in his hand. He raised his gaze and for the first time met hers evenly.

“To be perfectly honest, Scully, I was thinking I wanted a blow job. It’s been awhile.”

She was surprised. Not by his blunt admission -- which was designed to shock her, to shake her, and to get her out of his apartment -- but by his tone. Flat. Affectless. Without nuance or humor or even shame. It made her want to flinch. But she didn’t flinch.

“Everybody wants a blow job, Mulder. But you wanted this particular blow job badly enough to risk your work? Your reputation?”

“Such as it is,” he said and cast his glance toward the windows. She felt his sadness. Somewhere, he was in there. She moved from the chair to the other end of the sofa. He leaned his head back and sighed.

“I think you need to talk to someone. If not me, someone else. It's clear something is going on with you. What worries me, Mulder, is that you don’t seem yourself.”

“I don’t even know who that is.”

“I do. I know you.”

“Who am I, Scully?”

“You’re somebody who cares about the truth, above all else. About fairness and decency.”

He snorted. “How do you know?”

“Remember when we were in Wisconsin? In that little town with the vegan cult with their red turbans?”

“Yeah.”

“One of the kids from the compound was getting picked on in the street. And before we’d even begun to unravel the disappearances there, without thinking, you got involved. You stepped in. Because four against one. That’s who you are.”

“Scully,” he said shaking his head. She was tucking her coppery hair behind her ears, so close now. Tears swelled in the corners of his eyes. She smelled of grapefruit and myrrh and sunlight and she wouldn’t fucking leave. If he blinked they would spill. “Can you please just go?”

“No,” she said, sliding toward him. His hair was matted and stiff but she pushed his bangs out if his eyes and kissed his cheek, took his hand. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry I got you out of bed, Scully. I’m sorry you had to clean up my mess. And I appreciate that you were willing to do it. But right now I’m wishing I’d called Skinner.”

“Skinner?” she said, puzzled. They weren’t exactly BFF’s these days.

“This is his fault, anyway.” he muttered,

“What’s his fault?”

“Nothing,” he said, turning toward her. “It’s my fault. Obviously. I’m not even making sense. I’m really hungover. I barely slept. My whole body hurts.”

“Why did you get so drunk?”

“I don’t know. I played some ball at the Y and didn’t feel like coming home. I swung by the bar and it was ten shots later before I realized it. I only hazily remember deciding to go to the theatre. I’m lucky I didn’t get pulled over on the way.”

He skipped over his outing between basketball and the bar. But that couldn’t be helped.

“You’re lucky you got there alive. Had you been there before?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I go there once in a while. But, you know, sober.”

“Mulder, between you and me. What about the prostitute? Is that something you do once in a while too?” She was still next to him, still holding his hand.

“No. Never. Never before last night.”

“Is that the truth? I’m not here to judge.”

“It is. I said no to her at least twice.”

This was true. Detective Murdoch had told her the same thing.

“But as she walked away, I called her back. I paid her. I wanted it. Though I doubt I would have been capable. A moment of weakness.” He looked at his lap, shaking his head.

“What happened?”

“You know what happened. Her partner met us outside with the cuffs. I was on the ground then in the back of a squad car. I was booked,” he wiggled his fingertips, still inky, in front of his face. “An hour later I called you.”

“What happened that you changed your mind?”

He had an idea. A terrible idea, born of desperation. He knew the second it hit him he’d go through with it.

“I told you, Scully” he said. “I wanted a blow job.”

He took her hand and pressed it into his crotch. He was half hard just from the feel of her sitting there, her sweet exhales he was pulling into his lungs, and getting harder. He rubbed her knuckles, still twined with his, along the ridge of his cock.

“Mulder!” she said, pulling her hand away like she’d touched a branding iron.

She stood up and backed away. Then she turned sharply, muttering as she walked to the door.

“Isn’t that why you’re here Scully?” he called out, “to suck my dick?” He webbed his fingers behind his neck and leaned back, relieved her eyes were no longer on him.

Near the door, she had picked up her coat.

“You know what?” she said to herself. “Spiritual warfare it is.” She hung it carefully back on the hook.

Purposefully, she walked back toward him, slowly making an arc around the coffee table, her beige heels clicking against his plank floor.

She loomed above him, his eyes huge as platters on her, and full of fear. She stepped in, standing between his thighs, and folded herself to the floor.

She was on her knees in front of him.

“You’re right, Mulder” she whispered, moistening her lips with her tongue. “I came here to suck your dick.”

He looked at the ceiling, focused on a water stain there the shape of a manatee, stiff as a railroad spike between them.

She reached out and rubbed him through his pants. His hips twitched, seeking her hand. When she reached for the button of his jeans, he grabbed her wrists. Hard.

“Stop,” he said, twisting her arms. “You win, okay? Now could you please, for the love of fucking God, get out?”

She nodded. He released her wrists and she stood up, brushing herself off.

“Obviously Mulder,” she said, flipping her hair out of her eyes, “you don’t just want a blow job.”

He was looking steadily out the window, trying not to cry, trying to be anywhere but here.

She walked to the door and put on her coat.

“You’d better figure out why you acted like you did last night, before you destroy yourself.”

He didn’t answer.

“Get help, Mulder. Or the next time you’re locked up, call somebody else.”


	3. Chapter 3

Monday at 8pm, Scully was forty pages into The Other Brain, a tome detailing recent groundbreaking research on the gut. Evidently, the network of axons and synapses that converged there were more complex than previously believed. It would have been sixty if she’d been able to focus.

Curled on the sofa, feet tucked under her, she had a lot on her mind. She was still processing what she’d learned that day, about what had been going on with her partner. She found herself also replaying the encounter they’d had at his place the day before. Her cheeks warmed, remembering how she’d pawed at his erection through his jeans. Though she’d felt justified at the time, it was difficult in this new light to recall what, exactly, had moved her to do that. 

She put her book aside and meandered toward her kitchen. She hadn’t eaten since lunch. When she opened her fridge, the empty glare reminded her she’d skipped her Sunday grocery run in lieu of going to Mulder’s. She lifted and sniffed a paper container of Chinese takeout from the week before, tossed it in the trash. Went through the same process with two stiff pieces of pizza. She palmed a wizened tangerine, examined it closely, and set it back on the wire rack. Finally she pulled out a pitcher of water, poured herself a glass, and went back to her book. She wasn’t hungry, anyway.

She’d arrived at the office bright and early that morning, primped and primed to meet up with Mulder. She’d said what she needed to say, and was prepared to sidestep the weekend’s happenings and get on with the work. When he wasn’t there, she immersed herself in her report on the recent murders in Delaware they’d investigated, trying to couch events in a way that would support leniency for their blind, traumatized suspect. As she worked through the details, questions arose Mulder could have helped with; he’d gotten to know the woman better, after all. But he didn’t show. 

As she worked she watched the door, holding off checking up on him until eleven. At which time she made her way to Skinner’s office. His door was closed. Kimberly explained that Mulder had, early that morning, called in sick. Sounded innocuous, however rare an occurrence that had been until recently. Her gut told her something wasn’t right.

After lunch, chicken salad at her desk, she’d been summoned and escorted by Kimberly to a dimly lit room in the bowels of the building. Here she was surprised to find Skinner standing uneasily next to a man she didn’t recognize. 

Skinner introduced them. He was a US Attorney. Leamus. He looked like a lemur and that had been her mnemonic, with his bulging glassy eyes and scraggly hair. Lemuridae coradanus. She feared, however, him to be a member of the weasel family.

She was briefed. What she learned explained a lot, if not everything. 

Mulder was working under deep cover. Evidently he’d been contacted after delivering a lecture in Boston by a fringe paramilitary group hostile to the Federal government. They were hopeful Mulder shared their treasonous aspirations, and that he’d be willing to help them. He played ball. 

The New Spartans were, apparently, a loose confederation of menacing, shifty men a domestic terrorism task force had been finding it difficult to keep tabs on. They had been — quite sensibly — slow to trust Mulder, and were reluctant to confide in him whatever malignant machinations they might be gestating. He’d been working with them -- sporadically, on their terms, and with very little support -- for months. Skinner had advised Mulder not to inform her. 

“Was his arrest for solicitation part of his cover?” Scully had asked. “To make him seem all the more burned out and dissipated?” 

“No,” Leamus said. “That was real. But no harm done. He’s no good to them suspended, so we would have needed to extricate him from the charges without raising suspicion. But you took care of that. It worked out well, actually.” 

“He’s under a lot of pressure,” Skinner said. “They’re paranoid, these guys. They’ve been finding little ways to test his resolve, his loyalty.” 

“What kinds of ways?”

“Nativist hijinks,” Leamus said, waving his hand. 

Scully raked her gaze over this man. His smug, puffy face.

“Last night they picked him up went for a drive. Two goons slipped out of the car and stomped the shit out of a drag queen. Mulder was expected to… participate.”

“Did he?”

“No,” Skinner said. “That’s the problem, as twisted as that is. He hung back, then pulled them off before they killed the guy. Or girl. Whatever. She’s in the ICU. Missing some teeth, but she’ll live.” 

“What about Mulder?”

“Mulder tried to play it off. He lectured them about risking their higher goals. About lacking discipline. But he’s not sure they bought it. After they dropped him off, he went to the bar…” Skinner said, dropping his eyes to the carpet. “You know the rest.”

“Why are you telling me now?”

“Mulder asked me to. He wants you to steer clear outside of work until this operation is over…”

The way Skinner wasn’t meeting her eyes made her scared. For Mulder. She bored her eyes into his forehead, willing him to look up, wanting to get a read.

“He thinks on his feet, Mulder,” Leamus was saying. “He wouldn’t have been my pick to infiltrate their operation, given the anti-American sentiments he broadcast to attract these subversives. I was reluctant, but he’s been an asset. I just hope he holds up until we nail these guys.” 

Scully looked at him sharply. 

“Whatever it requires,” he said. He made pointed eye contact with her, though she didn’t know exactly what point she was supposed to be taking.

She squinted at him tucked her tongue into her cheek, hands on her hips. A lawyer in a suit. This guy. Had he listened to her exchange with Mulder, in his apartment? She jutted her chin out. He’d never put himself on the line, his loved ones if he’d managed to accrue any tucked away in a five bedroom in Chevy Chase. Big back yard. 

These men. A good agent falls to pieces. Gets sucked off, or -- more likely -- doesn’t, and it’s nothing to him. So a brilliant fragile man stays on a case on which he has no business. Collapses into the crater of himself with a force that generates zero ripples in the geopolitical pond. Of which, she knows in her bones, Leamus is the scum.

Scully realized she was glowering at the man, but didn’t wish to stop.

“Can I have a minute with my Agent?” Skinner asked. 

“Very well,” Leamus said. “Allow me to remind you, Agent Scully, that Agent Mulder’s life depends on your discretion.” He tapped his heels together and stepped off. 

“Scully,” Skinner said, “These are certifiable lunatics. He’s being watched closely. Very closely. You have to let him be.” 

Now she wondered if Walter had heard her exchange with Mulder the day before. She didn’t care. She, for one, was sure she had nothing to be ashamed of.

“Sir,” she said, drawing a breath. “Agent Mulder has many talents, as I’m sure you’re aware. He is a unique and exceptional Agent. But, with his history, he is not a good candidate for a furtive, protracted deep cover assignment. He needs support. Do I need to spell out for you the ways he’s showing signs of strain?”

Skinner shook his head, still not looking straight at her. “What can I tell you, Scully? The wheels are in motion. He’s our only way in, with these men. And he volunteered.” 

She spun around to leave.

“Hey. Scully,” he said, catching her elbow, looking now into her face. “We all answer to someone.”

“Whatever else your job entails, Sir, you’re entrusted with the safety of the Agents you oversee.”

He nodded, seemed to be about to reply. 

“If this ends badly, you’ll answer to me.”

Looking down at her book, she became aware she’d read the same short paragraph three times over. 

Just then, she heard three sharp taps on her door.


	4. Chapter 4

A brown paper sack crammed with takeout covered his face. She could smell red chili and turmeric. Indian food. Her favorite. He peeked out from behind the bag, apologetic smile firmly in place. Suddenly she felt ravenous.

“Hey,” he said, lowering the bag. “Peace offering.”

How could you not tell me, she didn’t say.

Instead she left the door open and turned her back, walked into the kitchen and dug two plates out of the cabinet. He followed.

“How was work?” he said, coming up behind her, testing her mood. He set down the bag on her counter right next to her. When she turned to him he held a finger to his lips. He reached out and laid it against her lips too, softly, before dropping his hand to the counter.

She looked around her own apartment and shrugged.

He nodded and shrugged too. He pulled a pen from the cup on her counter, began to scribble on the back of the receipt as she spoke.

“Not a bad day. Tied up some loose ends,” she said. “I wrapped up our report on the murders in Delaware.”

“Good,” he said. “I want to hear about that.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he said, handing her the note. He reached into the takeout bag, pulling out cartons and arranging them on her counter. There were a dozen. Mulder overcompensating. “It was more a mental health day,” he said.

She read his note.

**_These guys have reach. Deep state ties? Just a hunch. Better safe…_ **

“So I’m not likely to catch anything,” she said.

“Nah,” he said. “I got some sleep. Went for a long run. Cleared my head.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said. “Jeez, Mulder, did you have them wrap up the tasting menu? Because if all these containers are full, I won’t need groceries for a week.”

She was better too, ridiculously relieved to see him in one piece. Sober, showered, in jeans and a dress shirt. Eyes clear and alert, even as the set of his shoulders remained contrite. He looked like himself.

“I wasn’t sure what you were in the mood for,” he said. “I got some lamb, some chicken. A couple of vegetable dishes…”

“Here,” she said, handing him the plates. “I’m starving. It smells good. Let’s eat at the table.”

She drew two beers from the fridge and grabbed some cutlery, set two places for them. Then she walked to her desk and dug a new yellow legal pad from the bottom drawer. She snatched two pens from the desktop and set them on the table as he ferried over the cartons of food.

 ** _I HATE this_** , she wrote, and pushed the pad toward him as he sat down.

She had miscalculated, in her spiritual warfare. She wasn’t fighting his demons so much. It would be the two of them against it all. As ever.

“So where’d you get the food?” she asked as he held the pad in his hands, then bent to write back. She felt like she was in seventh grade, scratching out notes to her bestie in health class.

“Rasika,” he said, as she opened a carton of saag paneer, dished some out for both of them. In Adams Morgan. Huh. He’d gone out of his way to her favorite place, in his mortification.

Or, he’d been over there for some reason. She despised not knowing, but knew better than to ask. He slid the pad toward her and reached for his plate.

**_I hate it too. It’s better this way tho. I don’t want you anywhere near this case. Please Scully. These guys are dangerous. They’d never buy your involvement. And if you tail me, they’ll know. They'll kill you. Please._ **

“Looks delicious,” she said, serving herself heaps of fragrant korma as she read, then adding a dash of bright green chutney on top.

He stood up and wandered off toward the television, flipped it on and ran through channels as she wrote back. When she shot him a puzzled glance, he tapped his ear.

She had trouble imagining her place was bugged, though it was clear his was. And by the alleged good guys, no less. On whose authority had that action been undertaken? So he was right, better to be cautious.

She wasn’t sure she believed there were good guys, on this case. With the notable exception of her partner. Who could have, probably should have, told the man who contacted him in Boston to buzz off. Rather than letting himself get embroiled in this mess. Covert operations weren’t an area of expertise, for either of them.

He landed on a movie she didn’t recognize, something with a swelling score. He turned it up and returned to the table. Maybe if the walls did, indeed, have ears, the background noise would give them room to breathe, at least. Without being overheard.

She finished writing as he returned to the table. He tipped back his beer and took a slow sip as he read.

**_This operation violates all agent safety protocols and common sense. If I don’t have your back, who does?_ **

He shrugged and sighed.

She thought about his back more than he did. What else was new.

She sighed too. Paused, then dug into the food. For a few minutes they ate in silence. He picked up the pen and wrote.

_**They’re plotting something big. Soon. I have to stay on it. No other way to stop them.** _

“The food’s good,” she said, looking up after she read his note.

“I’m sorry, Scully. For yesterday.” He covered her hand with his.

“Me too,” she said. “I was out of line too.”

“You had your reasons,” he said.

She nodded. So did you, she said with her eyes. He squeezed her hand and went back to his food.

They ate, putting the weirdness behind them, and she updated him on the conference call she’d initiated with the detective and the DA in Wilmington. She’d all but convinced them to proffer Marty a soft plea. Voluntary manslaughter. Five to eight years.

“That’s great, Scully. I hate thinking of her in jail at all, but that’s the best offer she’s going to get.”

“She did commit a murder,” Scully said.

“So why did you go to bat for her? Did you come to see it my way?”

“I didn’t say that. I can’t definitively explain her connection to the perpetrator in these crimes, beyond the fact that he was her father. I don’t, however, believe Marty poses a further danger to society, now that he’s dead. Mortal danger, anyway. And I think she has a lot to offer.”

Mulder nodded. They’d found some middle ground again.

She filled him in on a meeting she’d sat in on that afternoon. The Bureau was changing protocol regarding opposite sex agents consorting in motel rooms on assignment. Tweaking the policies that had been in flux since the Tailhook sexual abuse scandal broke several years earlier. From her bag she dug out the copy of the new regulations she’d picked up for him.

“Hmmm,” he said, looking them over. “Same old same old. Some Navy jocks act like assholes and as punishment to them the rest of us have to mind our Ps and Qs…”

“I guess so,” she said.

“It seems like these new rules have restricted the freedom of women agents, more than anything…”

Shifting policies at the executive level never changed much between them. Their routines were well established and comfortable, grounded in mutual respect. Their conversation, therefore was academic, hypothetical. Even considering what had passed between them at his place the day before.

“I agree,” she conceded. “On the whole, when we’re working with larger groups of agents, the rules are a pain in the ass.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, eating. He finished up his meal before she did, which was atypical. She was conscious of him, the way he was watching her eat. Since her remission he seemed to enjoy her appetite when it emerged more than she did.

“You were hungry,” he said, tilting back his chair. His eyes on her face, her lips.

“I was,” she said.

“I’m glad. I was afraid you might have already had dinner.”

He looked satisfied. At once proud and relieved, like he’d field dressed and dragged back to the village an antelope the High Priestess found to her liking.

As the waves of feeling that tended to pass between them grew more complex, they also became more primitive, it seemed.

“I have to get going,” he said.

“Already?” she said, embarrassed before the word was all the way out of her mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, picking up the pen. “Places to go, people to see.”

 ** _They can’t know_**   he wrote on the pad between them, and paused.

She looked at him.

He continued writing  ** _you mean anything to me. Outside work._**

She nodded and stood. “I won’t keep you then.”

She carried their dishes to the sink and stowed leftovers as he sat at her table, doodling on the legal pad. Ripping and folding strips of paper in his nervous way. Not going.

She was absurdly glad for that. God knew when these jerks would pluck him from the street and whisk him off to ‘test’ him some more. She could only know for certain he was okay when he was in her eyeline. And, for the moment at least, she was going to have to get fine with that.

He stood, walked toward the sofa and scooped up the remote. But instead of turning off the TV, he sat down.

She dried her hands on a dish towel and joined him, sitting a little closer than she might have otherwise.

“A little light reading?” he asked, gesturing toward her thick book splayed on the coffee table.

She elbowed him affectionately. He smiled down at her, then dusted off a move from high school, reaching for the ceiling in a faux stretch yawn and lowering his arm around her shoulders. They were both smiling.

She snuggled against him in a way she wouldn’t have if they could talk about it. He propped his boots on the coffee table and they sat for a few minutes together, eyes toward her TV, not watching a movie.

She shifted to get his attention. You should have told me, she was going to whisper. But when she poked his ribs she felt guarding. She prodded them in the same spot and he winced. Tenderness.

“Mulder,” she said. He was looking away.

She worked the buttons of his shirt silently, peeled it open. His ribcage on the left side was a wash of blue and purple. She ran her hands over his skin, her fingers bumping over his ribs, tracing them longwise around to his flank, palpating. No breaks. But still. She saw some bruising on his abdomen and pushed down the waistband of his jeans to reveal a deep bruise on his hip bone blooming like a black orchid.

Her jaw was clenched in anger when he met her eyes. He was buttoning his shirt, standing up, a grim set to his mouth.

“Thanks, Scully. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I’ll walk you out,” she said as evenly as she could, stalking to the door, grabbing her keys. “I have to check my mail anyway.”

In the hallway she walked two paces ahead of him. Free to speak, but too angry, too despairing to say anything at all. She stopped at her mailbox and he pulled up next to her. She didn’t look at him.

“Hey,” he said. “Scully. The other night. They tuned me up when...”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, cutting him off and twisting her key, her eyes cast toward the dark compartment of her mailbox. She pulled out her only piece of mail, a bill, as he stood next to her.

He was looming over her, leaning his forearm against the wall. “You better go,” she said tightly. A tear slipped down her cheek and splattered against the envelope. She was pissed, and frustrated. And embarrassed he’d seen her crying.

He leaned down and whispered “not much longer.” He breathed hotly into her ear for a beat, then tucked her hair and kissed her under her ear. He slipped a folded piece of paper into her hand and slid out the door.

She closed her mailbox, straightened up, and walked back to her apartment. She turned off the television and tucked her legs under her, reaching for her book. She picked it up and smoothed out his note, scrawled on torn yellow paper, against the stiff cardboard cover. She read it, looked up and laughed, then glanced down and read it again.

**_When this is over DKS, if it ever is, I’m going to love you._ **

**________________________________________________________ **

 

end


End file.
